Tuesday, March 19, 2024
EditorialWho Should Win the King of the Ring 2015 Tournament?

Who Should Win the King of the Ring 2015 Tournament?

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During Extreme Rules, WWE announced some of its upcoming programming for this week and the one to follow. Some of it was previously advertised, but the biggest shocker of the bunch has to be the return of the King of the Ring tournament taking the 8pm slot that is left empty from Main Event’s absence.

After several years of being on hiatus, the famed one-night tournament will return to determine which wrestler will be granted the crown, the royal scepter and robe and likely a push toward either the upper midcard or main event in some fashion.

This is a great way for someone who, for one reason or another, is not being chosen to win a championship but still could use something to give their career a boost. It’s a classic way to get someone over as evidenced by Stone Cold Steve Austin, Hunter Hearst Helmsley, Owen Hart and many others who have won the prestigious event.

So who should be the next in line for this honor? There are plenty of people on the roster that could use it, but who stands out as the ones that could not only utilize the opportunity the best, but also be worthy of the significant push that follows? Here are a few of the top choices in my mind that should definitely be considered.

Dolph Ziggler

He’s the Showoff—the guy who can get it done in the ring better than everyone else. Why wouldn’t he be King of the Ring? I don’t think this is the most likely option out there, but it’s definitely an easy route to go. Having a babyface win a tournament is easy to book around by putting him in a position where his opponents can be particularly tough and he seems like he’s screwed when it comes to the finals, but he ends up coming out on top. Ziggler is probably not going to be world champion in 2015 and this could be a nice alternative prize to award him for his efforts. It would also help boost the feud he has going on with Sheamus at the moment, as the Celtic Warrior is a former King of the Ring himself and he would see this as an insult.

Bad News Barrett

Depending on what WWE plans on doing with the Intercontinental Championship situation, if the belt isn’t going to find its way onto Barrett, this would suit him well. Heels naturally work much better with the King of the Ring title than babyfaces since they can gloat incessantly about how this distinction makes them better than everyone else. Which people were more memorable as king, Randy Savage and King Booker or Bret Hart and Ken Shamrock? What potentially gets in his way (along with the possibility that he’ll stay in the hunt for the Intercontinental title instead) is that it would be tough to keep the bad news gimmick while maintaining the king persona.

Cesaro

Tyson Kidd and Cesaro work well as a tag team, but there probably isn’t a ton of long term potential in their duo. If there were, WWE probably would have invested some time in picking out an actual team name to refer to them as and they wouldn’t have dropped the titles to The New Day. Now that they have, though, there’s a lot of potential that they will be split up. If that were to happen, between the two of them, Cesaro is the much more likely option to be pushed in a singles capacity—especially as a King of the Ring. Giving him the mantle could pick him back up from his Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal win from WrestleMania 30 and in a way, act like the past year’s worth of struggles didn’t even happen.

Damien Sandow

Damien Sandow is another example of someone who was given a big win and then was completely unable to capitalize on it. After he won Money in the Bank, he began jobbing out and it continued until he lost his cash-in against John Cena. From there on, he was a joke, but he managed to take a ridiculous mimic character and get over with the crowd. While he was in recovery mode as Damien Mizdow, he grew to become one of the most popular acts in the company, but once again, instead of going full-force and pushing him to a midcard championship of some kind, WWE stalled his program with The Miz and then at the last minute, rushed the feud to a lackluster ending. Damien Sandow deserves much better than that and since he’s still a babyface that has fun playing around with different characters, seeing him be a lighthearted King of the Ring would be one hell of a fun idea in my opinion. This is someone who earned this spot a long time ago, yet the fruits of his labor have yet to be as nourishing to his career as they should have by now.

Ryback

To be perfectly honest, I’m just a fan of Ryback
and I think this would be kind of hilarious to see. The Big Guy is such a
ridiculous character in some ways and I’m beyond curious to see what
the end result would be. I do think Ryback is in need of a push and I’d
love to see him win a midcard title of some sort down the line, but if
this is another means to make him noteworthy and WWE goes all-in, then
I’m totally down for it.

Jimmy Uso

This is a darkhorse pick for sure, but I would argue that it could be a real game changer. Jey Uso is going to be out of action for a while and Jimmy Uso will be irrelevant on his own without some kind of an edge. His wife Naomi has already turned heel and it would make sense for Jimmy to follow suit so they can still accompany each other to the ring similar to what Natalya and Tyson Kidd have done. Jimmy has been particularly impressive over the past two years in the tag team division and it would be interesting to see what he can do solo, but as a babyface, there’s nothing new to create intrigue for fans. Winning King of the Ring would be a massive upset, as fans would likely just assume he’d get knocked out in the first round, so that would have a surprise factor in it that people love. Just the same, if WWE wants to do something different, he can go with a full Samoan regal look to the new attire he’d be wearing instead of just having the regular royal garb that we’ve seen plenty of times before. King Jimmy Uso would be a big step in one night that would take weeks if not months to pull off without such a tournament.

Out of that list, I’d honestly be rooting for Damien Sandow above the rest. If any of them were to win, I’d be perfectly happy, but that’s the one that makes the most sense to me as far as balancing out the hierarchy of the roster and trying to see who needs a little extra boost and might not be able to just be positioned into a random feud on their own.

Of course, there are still many other people that could take the King of the Ring mantle in an interesting direction and be worthy of it, but these are just a few suggestions of wrestlers that I feel are in a good position to make this very useful to their careers.

Who are you hoping to see win the tournament? Should it be a midcarder or upper midcarder like my list above or should it go to a main eventer to solidify the importance of the win? Should we get another two-time repeat like Bret Hart and have someone like Sheamus win it? Tell us your predictions, booking ideas and thoughts in the comments below!

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